Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns When you were a kid, what shotgun did you want most ???

As a kid, I took my hunter safety course in neighbor Bob Stevens living room one street up from mine in 1967. His wife served us milk and cookies during the course. After I passed both the written and shooting tests he gave me a Shooters Bible and told me to look at the guns and see what I liked and he would see about helping me find what I wanted. I decided I had to have an Ithaca 37 12 gauge, I loved the engraved receiver and the bottom ejection. As it turned out, he had one(used), and sold it to me for 75 dollars. I only had 55 dollars and had to sell my Crossman .22 pellet rifle for 20 dollars to make the purchase, and I did. About 4 years later I purchased a Deerslayer slug barrel for the gun(new) and couldn't believe I had to pay a WHOLE 60 dollars for just the barrel. I laugh today, that gun and slug barrel were probably one of the best investments I ever made. I shot my first everything with that gun, including my first deer. I more or less still have that gun, as it's been passed down to number one son and he is now shooting things with it as shown in the pics. Gun has functioned flawlessly all these years and have never had a problem with it.







Here would be THE 1974 vintage 1100 20 gauge you speak of. I bought it new in 1974 with a 28 inch modified barrel. I still have to original green box it came in that says '1100 lightweight, Mahogany stock and forend'. You can literally look at the wood in the pic and see it's mahogany. Around 1988, well after they discontinued the 20 lightweight built on the 12 gauge frame, and extra barrels for it(pre 77) I came across an original NIB smoothbore slug barrel for this gun, hence the scope in the pic. My daughter carries this gun nowadays.